The Useless Kind of Love
by Ctoonsluv
Summary: How DID Mephisto ever get cured from the Archers' Love Spell? Well Talia knows, but she is taking that secret with her to her grave. Silly oneshot.


I really loved the Be Mine Episode, but have been wondering HOW Mephisto cured himself.

Here's my head canon and I will believe it completely until it is proven otherwise.

* * *

"Iris! Oh IRIS! My beloved Princess, please come out!" the bewitched Mephisto was calling from the air, floating outside the pink princess's bedroom window. He dared not get too close, for he had been already zapped by the magical barrier of their home, "I escaped my sister to come find you, my love! I did everything you asked of me, my love! Please just talk to me!"

Suddenly, the light came on and his heart began to soar.

"Oh, Iris, I'm so happy you-!"

The window flew open, only to reveal a very annoyed looking Talia, glaring at him as if he would soon be regretting his decisions.

"Ah... you're not Iris,"

"What. Are. You. Doing, Mephisto?"

The green sorceror stuck an accusing finger out at the Xerin royal, "I am trying to be reuinited with my beloved. Stop hiding her! Tell me where she is,"

"She isn't here, you idiot," Talia's words were laced with venom, "She's at the movies with Nathaniel,"

"Who?"

"He works at the smoothie bar. Her boyfriend,"

Mephisto felt his heart snap in half. Talia was actually shocked she could see the phenomon actually happen before her eyes. All of the color and life drained from his eyes and he looked... rigid and solid. As if her words had frozen him into stone.

"B-Boyfriend...?" He repeated, "But I... I thought..."

Talia shook her head. She didn't feel even slightly bad for the poor fool. He had brought this all on himself. Conjuring up such a horrible beast with so much power. He had put Iris through the exact same thing. No way was he getting a shred of sympathy from her, but she also wasn't exactly enjoying his misery, either.

Suddenly, Mephisto's eyes lit up with desperate hope.

"Hey! D-does boyfriend mean something ELSE than it does on Ephedia? Like... like maybe it's just-"

"No, Mephisto. It means the same thing as it does back home," Talia frowned, "Iris loves Nathaniel, not you,"

Ok maybe she was enjoying this a tiny bit.

Mephito's head hung low as his hands balled into fists. He had a slight tremor to his shoulders, as if he was crying. Talia's eyebrows raised, suddenly wondering if, perhaps, she had gone too far.

"Hey... don't cry-"

Mephito's head shot back up, tears were indeed in his eyes, but he had the look of an unhinged mad man about to unleash an onslaught of rage.

"Then I will just have to kill this smoothie boy for stealing my beloved pumpkin away from me!" Mephisto shouted.

"Woah, woah, wait a minute!" Talia exclaimed, "You can't just...!"

"JUST WATCH ME!"

In a flash of green and black, Mephitso vanished. Talia's heart was racing as she summoned her blue floating crystal diamond and dashed off towards the cinedome. She had considered calling out to Auriana, but with Mephisto's teleportation powers, there was simply no time. She had to move quickly.

Besides, she was certain she could handle the twin on her own without his sister helping.

...

When she arrived at the CineDome she was relieved to find that it didn't look like Mephisto had gotten there yet... though she was unsure as to how that was possible. Especially since he knew where they were and had teleported. She took the opportunity to look around for Iris and make sure Nathaniel was ok. She remembered Iris mentioning they were seeing a romantic drama based off a book series Iris adored. What was it called again?

She looked at the show listings, trying to narrow it down. As soon as she saw it she remembered hearing it from Iris's lips.

"One ticket for _The Useless Kind of Love_ , please," She told the vendor.

The confused teen gave her an annoyed kind of frown, "That movie is almost over,"

"Yes," Talia smiled nervously, "I'm meeting my friends, I just ended up running late,"

"whatever," the vendor accepted her weak excuse and printed her ticket, telling her she didn't need to pay for only 20 minutes of movie.

Talia thanked him and made her way to the correct theatre as quickly as she could.

When she finally made it, she opened the doors and strained her eyes to see in the dark room, while trying to not draw too much attention to herself. Relief washed over her when she saw the couple snuggled up between a big cardboard bowl of popcorn. They were safe, and oblivious to the impending threat to Nathaniels life.

Just as Talia was about to leave the theatre to find Mephisto, she heard a familiar voice sniffling to her left. Looking down, she spotted the man in question, seated in one of the many empty seats close to the front of the theatre. He had tears streaming from his eyes and was hiccuping heavily, his gaze transfixed on the film before him.

Confused, Talia delicately slipped into the aisle to sit beside him, if only to not disturb the movie patrons, especially Iris and Nathaniel.

"What are you doing?" Talia whispered to him harshly, "I thought you came here to attack Nathaniel,"

"I was going to..." Mephisto sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve, "But this movie..."

"Waht?"

"T-Tom loves her so much... he's been there for her for so long... but now she wants Marco... j-just cos Tom is a greedy bad guy..." Mephisto trembled as he whispered through his tears, "I... I think she's really gonna leave him... just cos Marco listens to her and the have fun together..."

If Talia's eyes could have rolled any harder they would have fallen out of her head. That was the most cliche movie plot she had ever heard... and here he was rooting for the villain. Typical.

"Ok, funs over, lets go," Talia started to nudge him out of his seat, but Mephisto flung his arm out and batted her away.

"Unhand me, woman!" He kept his voice quiet, but was quite aggressive. He settled in and went back to his tears, "I need to see how this ends,"

The last thing on Earth Talia wanted to do was sit and watch this stupid movie with Mephisto. But, she certainly couldn't just leave him here to kill Nathaniel. She sat back in her seat and looked up at the film relunctantly. Oh was that Lilly Bowman?

 _"do you take this man to be your lawfully wedding husband?"_

 _"I..." Lilly's character hesitated. She looked at her fiance, Tom, who was grinning devilishly at her, "I..."_

 _"C'mon, babe," Tom whispered at her, "what are you waiting for?"_

 _"I..." She looked out to the crowd and saw Marco rush inside the church. He ran halfway down the aisle and gazed up at her with dramatically pathetic eyes. Lilly bowman's character smiled so wide and threw her bouquet in Tom's face, "I WON'T!"_

"So heartless...!" Mephisto cried.

Talia rolled her eyes.

 _Lilly dove off the altar and into Marco's arms who whisked her away, admist the shocked and horrifed faces of everyone but her sassy maid of honor who was cheering her on._

"Good grief..." Talia grumbled.

The movie finished up, the credits rolled and the theatre started to clear. Talia kept her eyes open for Iris and Nathaniel, who, luckily, went out the door furthest from where Talia and Mephisto had been sitting. Mephisto was sobbing at this point, head in hands and bent over with his elbows on his knees. Talia was more than slightly disgusted by his behavior for more reasons than she cared to count, but once the coast was clear and they were all alone in the theatre, she started to try and persuade Mephisto again.

"Why don't you just go home, Mephisto?"

"I can't..." He sobbed, "I have to... kill Iris's boyfriend..."

"You are not going to kill anybody," Talia told him, "Do you even know how? Have you even done that before?"

"I... I'm sure I have..." He sniffed, lifting his head from his palms. He wiped away his tears and hiccuped as more flowed, "I mean... I know I've definitly wounded atleast some,"

"Listen, I get that you're feeling... hurt... but this is only a temporary spell. It'll pass... eventually... probably," Talia shrugged,"in the meantime, why don't you take this opportunity to rest and figure out what you're..."

"I'm going to kill him, Talia!" Mephisto choked out his last sob and turned to fly out the door Iris and Nathaniel had went through moments before.

"Crystal Restricio,"Talia called out and a long blue crystal beam shot from the ground and wrapped around Mephisto's ankle, dropping himto the ground. Mephisto whined a loud cry, only to turn on his side and shoot dark green crsytals at the princess. Talia dodged them, but in her scamper, Mephisto broke her blue crystal chain and was flyin in the air. Talia, thinking quickly, barricaded all the doors with her magic. The doors were encased with blue crystal and hardened so that it would slow Mephisto down... and keep anyone from entering.

"Nothing will stop me from saving my beloved Iris! NOTHING!" He turned around to fly at Talia, who held out her arms and hit him with a single solid crystal. It collided with him, causing him to flip forward in the air and come crashing down. Talia meant to get out of the way, but his movements were too erradict and he collided into her face first...

his lips lightly grazing hers... Other than the feeling of their teeth smashing into eachother and being extremely painful... Talia could feel the dark magic on him clear away. But it all happened so fast, she could have been imagining things...

Because no sooner had he smashed into her face did she fall back, causing him to skid over her once more and land on a row of seats back-first. A distinct pink-purple haze floated around him and dissipated into the air.

He lay there, lifeless like a rock that had just been skipped over the water. He groaned as he attempted to move, but everything hurt... especially his teeth. His hand came up and rubbed them, worried he may have chipped a tooth.

"Ughhhh... what the...?" He cranned his neck upwards, spotting Talia who was getting up onto her knees, "Talia...?"

"Yeah what?"

"The spell...its broken..." He sat up, rubbing the back of his head nursingly, "How did? What just happened?"

"The spell is broken!? N-no that can't be!" Talia blinked in a frantic state, looking at him as if something horrible had just happened, "Are you sure!? D-don't you want to kill Nathaniel?"

"Not any more than I wanna kill anybody else, I guess...?"

"Surely you're mistaken! Think! Don't you wanna cuddle Iris or defy your master to be with her?"

"No," He said flatly, with an aire of disgust, "Why are you acting this way? The spell is broken, should you be relieved? What? Is this some kind of test?"

"I..." Talia stammered. She gulped. She knew that the other two bewitched by the archers' spell had been cured by a kiss from their true love... she had seen it. But what had transpired between Talia and Mephisto hadn't been a kiss KISS. They just... smashed faces. That couldn't have been the same thing, right?

Even if... his lips DID touch hers...

Ok ok. MAYBE ANY kind of kiss would work. It's not like Talia was completely certain the other 4 were each others' true loves, after all. Perhaps anybody can just kiss away any magical property cast by dark magic?

Talia was pacing about to herself, muttering slightly and her eyes darted as she tried to come up with a rational reason Mephisto was suddenly cured. She wasn't his true love. She couldn't be. She couldn't.

"Well, this is getting weird," Mephisto grew bored by how strange Talia was being. He rose to his feet and swiped his hair out of his eyes, and Talia slightly gasped when she noticed the small delicate beads of sweat that flew from the strands... everything seemed to go slower as she watched his casual, bored gaze flip his hair back so effortlessly. He then turned his eyes onto her... his perfect... green eyes that looked like flawlessly cut emeralds that held such depth that Talia wondered if she could get lost in them,"Well I'll uh... see you later, you know... next time I try to destroy you,"

A blush was spread across the young princess's face as she was staring at him in what appeared to be absolute horror.

"SOUNDS GREAT!" Talia exclaimed, turning around to dash out the theatre, shattering the crystal barieer she had created.

Mephisto blinked in confusion... He hadn't intended on being so intimidating... and to be honest, he had never seen Talia so freaked out. Maybe he WAS getting eviler. Oh boy! He couldn't wait to tell Praxina.

Meanwhile, Talia was making a beeline home. Her head was swimming with all the very many reasons she absolutely, under no circumstances could ever be inlove with anyone like Mephisto. She listed them off as she walked, becoming more and more sure with each example. By the time she was only a few steps away from the house, she had almost the comlete Mephisto assessment.

He was despicable. He delighted in hurting others.

He thrived on chaos.

He was such a bafoon... always making jokes and crying like a baby when things started to go south.

He was lazy and selfish.

And what is with his stupid outfit? Even on Ephedia that jacket was considered tacky.

So what if he was strikingly handsome and funny and was really smart and...

Wait...

"Talia?"

Her heart stopped at the sound of Iris's voice. She looked up and saw her friend walking towards her with Nathaniel in towe.

"Fancy seeing you here," Iris giggled, "Out for a stroll?"

"Uh... yeah," Talia chuckled nervously, "I just needed some air. Sorry, I didn't mean to interupt,"

"Actually, I'm glad you're here," Iris admitted, "I left my key inside and I didn't want to have to ring the doorbell and wake everyone up. You have yours don't you?"

"Oh," Talia sighed in relief, reaching into her inside jacked pocket, "of course,"

She was startled when she pulled out her keys and a small blue slip of cardboard fell out and landed on the ground by her feet. Iris and Nathaniel both saw it fall, but didn't notice what it actually was. Talia knew. And it made her heart freeze.

It was the movie ticket.

Thinking quickly, she snatched it up and crumbled it in her hands.

"Just some garbage," Talia excused, even though she didn't need to. The lovebirds couldn't care less, still lost in eachothers company. She followed them to the house, but kept the ticket in her hand protectively... gently stroking it smooth again in her palm with her thumb.

She reminded herself one last time that she was not, in no way shape or form in love with Mephisto. Heck. She didn't even like him. In fact. She DESPISED him.

But she didn't throw the ticket away.

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Love you


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